Diagonals tonight at beerland

It turns out that my band Diagonals is playing LAST at Beerland tonight, not first... This is the first time we've ever 'headlined' a show, so please, if you can, come out and see us! I'm not familiar with the other bands in the set, but I know one of them is visiting from Scotland. I'm not sure what time we'll go on yet, but my guess would be some time after midnight. I'll send updates to my twitter page when I get a better idea when we are playing.

Weekend notes

It's been a good few weeks for movies, but I haven't posted much due to work and a ruined keyboard that had me resorting to using voice commands and Ink (the handwriting recognition unceremoniously dumped over from the Newton into OS X) to use my computer for a few days.

First off, The new print of The Holy Mountain that played at The Alamo was fantastic looking. I'm anxious to see what the following DVD's for it and El Topo look like. I can finally retire my awful looking bootleg discs.



I caught the premier of Grindhouse on Wednesday and I'm still not sure how I feel about the whole affair. "Uneven" is one of those words that reviewers toss around when they can't think of anything substantial to say, but I'm tempted to use it here. I enjoyed both halves, and the payoff for Death Proof was especially great, but neither one felt remotely like a real grindhouse exploitation film. The only really authentic moments were in a couple of the trailers (although "Swedish Cowgirls" was disappointingly absent) , in the grotesque slides advertising a mexican food restaurant, and in the brilliant title switch at the beginning of the second film. Tarantino's character building chatter in Death Proof somehow managed to be the least interesting of any of his dialogue so far, but all of Kurt Russell's scenes are great. I felt like there should have been more of his character and either less of the chatting that made up the bulk of the film, or more compelling chatting. There were also an amazing number of nods to the Drafthouse, and Lars and Tim & Carrie got credits at the end of the film, which was a nice surprise. I'll give the film(s) another viewing on DVD when it comes out and cement my opinion.

Oddly one of the most exiting parts of the screening was seeing the photo-perfect tattoo of the poster for Hitchcock's "The Birds" on the shoulders of one of the Texas Rollergirls who was ahead of me in line. If you own this tattoo and you are reading this for some reason, will you please email me so I can take a picture of your tattoo? Seriously. I don't even like tattoos and I was totally floored by how cool it was.

I finished up Wednesday with a Weird Wednesday screening of an expectation defying 70's pimp movie that I am not going to name here for various reasons- I just want to note that it was one of the best films I've seen at WW in a while.

Tonight I'm going to the closing party for my bandmate Dustin Kilgore and friend Jaime Zuverza's Art shows at Mass Gallery (next to the Blue Genie). It should be going until 2, so if you are looking for something to do in Austin tonight, please come see the work before it's taken down.

Alamo Downtown to rennovate the Ritz on 6th street

As much as I love the original Alamo location, this is pretty amazing news from Lars:

As you are all aware, we have spent the last year planning ways to raise funds to cover the impending rent increase that was inevitable in the wake of our lease expiration. The Heroes of the Alamo foundation attracted many
loyal members willing to contribute to the cause, and though the risk was still great, we were about to renew our lease at double the rent rate.

However just before we signed, an opportunity presented itself that reduces our financial risk and is also exciting enough to overcome our reluctance to leave our beloved home of 10 years. It was unexpected, and it was also the only possible solution that could have induced us to sever our sentimental attachment with only a single tear, rather than a flood. We hope that our Heroes who really like beer, pizza, and our downtown programming will be equally pleased.

Starting in April we will begin remodeling the historic Ritz Theater on Sixth St. to be our new, improved downtown theater. Besides being a beautiful and historic Austin landmark, it will have much larger screens - two of them, in fact. And the full-blown renovation will allow us to offer improved sound and projection equipment, stadium seating, a larger kitchen and bar, improved restrooms and better ADA access.

The Ritz itself was an old school grindhouse theater before becoming a nightclub in the '80s. We're thrilled to be able to return it to its former glory and we look forward to meeting all the ghosts. As much as we love and will miss the theater on Colorado, we feel like you are the greatest film-going audience in the world and you deserve a movie palace.

Holy Mountain - March 20th - Alamo Drafthouse

It's coming. On March 20th, we'll finally get to see Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain as it was meant to be seen- not in a shitty Japanese laserdisc bootleg someone filmed off a screen 30 years ago, but in a new 35mm print. For those of you not familiar with the film, I implore you to go see it and get your brains thoroughly scrambled. The film is not art, it's witchcraft. Crazy, ridiculous, scary, amazing witchcraft.

This pic would cost a billion dollars to make nowadays, and its first half hour of in-your-face imagery (crucified, skinned animals; storm troopers; cripples; flowers blooming from stigmata; exploding toads) is like prime Fellini on really prime Peyote. Outrageous, pretentious, unbelievable, and unforgettable. There'll never be another film remotely like it! (Steven Puchalski, Shock Cinema)

Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas

Going for a walk

Sitting out SXSW

I've kind of found myself sitting this SXSW out for the most part, which is weird because it's the year that so many of my peers and friends have kind of gained ascendency over the festival. I went to the Zellner/Duplass shorts block to videotape their preshow antics, but I've pretty much skipped everything else. I can't exactly say why. I don't have a badge this year or anything I'm directly promoting, I'm not chairing any panels, and while it would be a good idea for me to have attended the interactive festival on behalf of my company Mediatronica, none of our projects are public yet, so it's not really imperative to go get the word out.

This friday I'm going to see Fish Kill Flea, and I've enjoyed seeing filmmaker and tech friends who are in town, but for the most part I'm writing this year off and getting some work done instead.

Elaine Ling - Abandoned, Namib Desert

Scott Casey put this link in the comments of my last post, but it was good enough to post on its own:

These images are from a diamond mining ghost town in the Namib desert.

This natural installation began 40 years ago when the German miners and their families abandoned this small cluster of homes struggling to remain above the sand. Once left to the unhindered advances of the enormous linear sand dunes rolling back from the sea, the rooms began filling up with sand and the very familiar objects of daily living took on a surrreal affect.

Here in the unrelenting sunlight and the howling silence I found a place that proclaims Nature as the final winner.

Man's absence has been acknowledged by the pulse of the moving dunes.

Elaine Ling - Abandoned, Namib Desert Photography

Re: Woman in the Dunes

I've been bare-bones-blogging on here lately, but I just had to take a moment to jot a few notes about Woman in the Dunes.
I had seen the movie a few years back on VHS and honestly it hadn't made an impression on me, I wasn't paying close enough attention and I had seen it during a big glut of movie watching that was overwhelmed by a few Ozu titles.

Last night I saw the film again from a 35mm print and was blown away. I now think it may be a perfect movie. From the early shots of absent minded entomologist Jumpei (Eiji Tokada from Hiroshima Mon Amour) taunting an ant lion in one of the films spectacular macro shots- laughing as the insect attempts to dig itself back into the sand to make its trap, teasing it out again, this movie started working on me. As a scientist Jumpei lords over nature and distances himself from the teeming humanity of Tokyo, but an ant-lion trap has been prepared for him as well, to bring him back into his hopelessly inescapable niche as a human animal- and this trap is scaled to fit. After he misses a bus out of "town" the villagers who live in the dunes send him down a rope into a pit to stay the night in a ramshackle house slowly being eaten away and filled with sand. The widow there feeds him and tends to him, until she has to attend to her real job- hauling sand out of the pit so that it won't bury the house, a sisyphean labor that she endures from dusk to dawn, as the villagers take the sand by pulley to sell to concrete factories. The next morning the rope ladder that Jumpei descended to get to the house is gone, and his identity is exchanged for that of a nameless "helper" and finally "husband".

I can't stress enough how effective Hiroshi Segawa's photography is in this film, and what a call to see films like this in the cinema and not on television Woman in the Dunes is. I can hardly think of another movie that has so many layers of meaning that are communicated almost solely with visuals.

Austin Cinematheque: WOMAN IN THE DUNES | Austin Film Society

Austin Cinematheque: WOMAN IN THE DUNES | Austin Film Society:

The AUSTIN CINEMATHEQUE cordially invites you to a FREE 35mm screening of Hiroshi Teshigahara's Japanese underground classic, WOMAN IN THE DUNES, in a restored, Director's Cut version from Janus Films.

"[...]More than almost any other film I can think of, WOMAN IN THE DUNES uses visuals to create a tangible texture--of sand, of skin, of water seeping into sand and changing its nature. It is not so much that the woman is seductive as that you sense, as you look at her, exactly how it would feel to touch her skin. The film's sexuality is part of its overall reality: In this pit, life is reduced to work, sleep, food and sex, and when the woman wishes for a radio, 'so we could keep up with the news,' she only underlines how meaningless that would be." -Roger Ebert

Zellner Vs. Duplass

Link

Edo-period kappa sketches ::: Pink Tentacle

I'm fascinated by Kappas (mythological Japanese water-imps) and love doodling them into the pantheon of cuddly-yet -horrible creatures I put in the margins of my notebooks. Today I saw this - Pink Tentacle curates a great collection of Edo period Kappa sketches.

appa, arguably Japan’s most well-known creature of legend, are mischievous river imps notorious for luring people — particularly children — into the water to drown and eat them. They smell like fish, enjoy cucumbers and sumo, and are said to be very courteous despite their malicious tendencies.

Although kappa are typically about the size of a child and greenish in color, they can vary widely in appearance. They frequently have a turtle-like shell and scaly skin, but sometimes their skin is moist and slick, or coated in fur. Most walk upright on their hind legs, but they are occasionally seen on all fours. Regardless of body type, the top of the kappa’s head usually features a bowl-shaped depression containing water. The water inside this bowl is the source of the kappa’s power.